Sunday, March 8, 2009

Ottawa Scoring

I looked up some stats to show the decline in Ottawa's scoring before and after January 1, 2008, to support my claim that is was primarily a decline in offence that caused their tumble in the standings over the last season and a half. Here are points per game stats for the key players on Ottawa:

There was only one key player on Ottawa who had a scoring rate that improved since January 1, 2008. He went from 0.54 points per game to 0.56 points per game. What was his reward for reversing the trend? Getting traded for Columbus' backup goalie. My sympathies to Sens fans, because the future doesn't look particularly bright in Ottawa.

Sorry for not making that clear in the post, the before period was 2006-07 and the first half of 2007-08, with the idea that then both the before and after samples would consist of roughly a season and a half worth of games.

TCG: Did you adjust the numbers to account for the overall decrease in scoring in the NHL resulting from the reversion to muck-and-grind hockey somewhere around the 60-game mark of the 2006-07 season (and officially in the 2007-08 season). To give you some frame of reference, I looked up how many point/game players there were in each season since the lockout (minimum of 60 pts or 60 games):

2005-06: 302006-07: 292007-08: 232008-09: 20 (projected)

Many of those drop-offs are so precipitous that they would easily exceed the expected reduction from less offense league-wide. But I just thought that should be included in the analysis.

Also, the blue-line talent bleed that the Sens have experienced over the last three seasons hasn't helped matters, either.

About Me

I'm Philip Myrland, goalie stats blogger since 2007 and former writer for Hockey Prospectus. I call myself a contrarian because I rely mainly on stats-based analysis, think large sample sizes are more important than "big saves" and prefer to rank goalies based on save percentage rather than team success. In other words, pretty much the mainstream views of the hockey analytics community, but I've grown attached to the handle and plan to keep it as long as broadcasters everywhere keep bringing up GAA and wins. If you have any questions or comments contact me by email (contrariangoaltender@gmail.com). You can also follow me on Twitter (@tcghockey).